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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23007880">Santa Fe</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84'>treefrogie84</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester knows Rent, Depressed Dean Winchester, Gen, Pre-series through Season 5, Songfic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:02:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>663</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23007880</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants to run away too, for all that it's pointless. His life-- monsters, Dad, all of it-- will follow him anywhere he goes. Santa Fe is just another town.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Santa Fe</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, at some point, Dean memorizes Rent enough to quote a speech off the top of his head to a room full of teenagers. </p>
<p>If you *don't* have Santa Fe memorized, try this: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI8PLQaNkKQ">2008 Broadway Cast </a> (This isn't the exact version I had running in my head, I had the 1996 version, but whatever, close enough and it's closer than the movie version)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’s already decided this is the last high school-- Sammy can take care of himself so what’s the fucking point? Hunting is more important than school anyway. He can save people, actually do something worthwhile.</p>
<p>He first hears it while he’s skulking around the band hallway. The other kids hum it and whisper-sing it between classes, playing it on pianos and violins and every other instrument they have. It’s all he hears at school for weeks, that or the depressing one, about someone’s last year on Earth. </p>
<p>The song captures his attention though, running away from all your problems to start over in a new town, a new place. Reinventing yourself someplace full of sunshine. It’s tempting after the darkness of late fall in the Midwest, he sees why everyone’s obsessed with it.</p>
<p>Dean wonders if that longing is anything like how Sam feels, when he insists he’s getting out of hunting, going to quit and have a normal life.</p>
<p>Not that it matters. He’s been to Santa Fe half a dozen times already, and it’s the same as every other godforsaken town.</p>
<p>The song keeps showing up though. Brief snippets running through his head when Dad’s on another drunken rage, or when Sammy-- Sam now-- starts whining about hunting instead of homework.</p>
<p>
  <em>Do you know the way</em>
</p>
<p>He’s twenty-three and flipping through a stack of CDs at a late season garage sale, killing time between hunts, when he finds the soundtrack. He doesn’t even think about it, passing the teenager manning the table the two bucks they’re asking and practically running back to Baby. </p>
<p>He finds a quiet park on the edge of town before he fumbles the tape deck adapter out of the glove box. Plugging everything in, he skips the tracks he doesn’t care about to get to the one he does-- he’ll get to them eventually, but this song has been haunting him for five years, he has to exorcise this before he can move on.</p>
<p>Relaxing into the seat of the Impala, he… cries. Wishes he could have as much hope as these characters do. Hell, he’s pretty sure one (all?) of them has AIDS and they still have more hope than he does.</p>
<p>Taking a deep breath, he starts the CD over and drives away to the sound of two kids screening their calls to avoid their parents and landlord.</p>
<p>
  <em>Let’s open up a restaurant</em>
</p>
<p>He listens to it on repeat for weeks after River Pass, aching every time he glances at the passenger seat, half expecting to see Sam there. Four and a half years of seeing him every day, and now…</p>
<p>Sam’s as gone as Dad, as Cas. </p>
<p>Dreaming about the Apocalypse just not being his problem anymore is as close as he’s ever going to get. Running away isn’t his style-- he can’t run away, not from this, it’ll just follow him. No matter what he does, the Apocalypse will follow him.</p>
<p>Still, it keeps playing, he keeps hearing it over and over again in his head. A vain longing for some other life.</p>
<p>In the quiet darkness, riding towards a confrontation with Lucifer Dean doesn’t think will succeed with a druggie, <em>fallen</em>, Cas-- so human it hurts-- it mixes with The End and combines into an apocalyptic hope, a small green sprout trying and failing to grow.</p>
<p>There is no running away here, no friendly towns willing to offer shelter to immigrants. Just the hopeless realization that dreaming accomplishes <em>nothing</em>.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter. He’s still a hunter, everything is still coming to an end, and his angel is… wherever. Beside him and far, far away.</p>
<p>
  <em>Tumble weeds, prairie dogs…</em>
</p>
<p>Knocking on Lisa’s door is the hardest thing he’s ever done. Running away to Santa Fe after all, even knowing it will end in disaster, that there’s no chance a normal life will actually mean anything for him.</p>
<p>But he promised Sammy, and Cas is gone, so what’s the point in doing anything else?</p>
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